Joseph Mallozzi's Blog, page 399

December 15, 2014: The Dark Matter Cookie Exchange!

Kyle – our master of ceremonies

The plan was to make my dough the day before, allow it to chill overnight, and then wake up early Monday morning and bake my cookies so that they could be fresh and warm for the 10:00 a.m. cookie exchange.  In retrospect, a late decision to test-bake a batch probably saved my ass.  Given the size of my kitchen, the single baking pan that came with the apartment, and the fact that I had to bake 13 dozen cookies, I probably would have had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to be ready in time.  As it was, I was baking until bedtime last night.

78 cookies later and I’m ready for bed.

This morning, I was the first one to present my Drunken Uncles (TM Lawren Bancroft-Wilson and/or whoever actually came up with the Drunken Uncle name) at the first annual Dark Matter cookie exchange.

 Akemi included a tag with each bag of cookies.  A nice touch, I thought (note the careful attention to red noses).  And then I saw the little tags on the cookies presented by our 1st Assistant Art Director and Graphics Maestro Roxanne Borris:

Pretty awesome, no?

We gathered in the production office where we laid our cookies out for the photo op -

Two of our bakers M.I.A. Note my endearingly natural smile.

After which we helped ourselves to the cookie selection – 12 half dozen varieties.  I sample every one of them.

Lunch!

And then shut my office door and napped until it was time to go home.

Can’t wait until next year!

Tagged: Dark Matter

December 14, 2014: Snow Monkeys, Bourbon-laced Cookies, and Dogs!

My Fantasy Football team, The Snow Monkeys, are on life support following a career worst performance by Green Bay Quarterback Aaron Rodgers.  And subpar performances by Tre Mason, Steve Smith, and Adam Vinatieri didn’t help.  We’re down 96.82 to 71.2o heading into tomorrow’s Monday Night game.  Do you think my final player, running back Matt Forte, has 27 fantasy points in him?  He did it once before this season, in Atlanta.  Can he do it at home against the New Orleans Saints?  I’m staying positive!

Drunken Uncles!

In addition to bemoaning my Snow Monkeys inevitable defeat, I spent much of the weekend refining my recipe for Monday’s Dark Matter cookie exchange.

“A watched cookie never bakes” – old proverb

All told, I will make approximately 80 of my Bourbon Brown Butter Cookies with Roasted White Chocolate Chunks (a.k.a. “Drunken Uncles” – thanks to Lawren Bancroft-Wilson, a fellow Fantasy Football weekend loser, who came up with the name), six for each cookie exchange participant plus leftovers for the innocent bystanders.

A dejected Lawren heads home, depressed by his team’s elimination from fantasy football playoff contention – and the fact that there’s already a drink called a Drunken Uncle.

And when she wasn’t helping me bake cookies, Akemi was making the dogs breakfast…

This morning, for instance, it was banana pancakes.  Yes.  The dogs had a banana pancake breakfast.  They can file that one away in the “pro” column.

And this one under “con”.

December 13, 2014: Snow Dogs!

Well, turns out I’m not the only one who is going to have to get used to deep freeze here in Toronto.

Due to her hip dysplasia, arthritic shoulders, and advanced age (almost 16!), Jelly gets a free ride.   Literally.  She gets shuttled from the hotel to the park and back in a special dog stroller.  Pro: The comfy trip.  Con: She pays the price by having to wear the Santa Pug outfit.  Akemi insists: “The dogs LOVE to dress up!”.  I remain unconvinced.

In emergencies, the patio offers a great back-up to the long and involved trek to the park.  Snow can complicate matters though!

For the rest of the gang, who don’t have the luxury of stroller rides, it’s socks and boots (and jackets and Christmas bells)!  Getting them dressed is a two-person job.

But once we’re done, it’s a stylin’ all systems go!

Although, in retrospect, the addition of hats might be advisable.

Alternately, dialing down the fun ensures a mercifully quick and much less snowy stroll.

Lulu, however, always makes the best of even the worst situations.  If life gives you snow, make snowmanades.  Or just chase down a ball.

December 12, 2014: Dark Matter! The Week in Meetings!

We are officially in prep on episodes #101 and #102 of Dark Matter.  The train has left the station and is barreling down the tracks.  There’s no turning back now. We’re making a t.v. show!

As we creep ever-closer to our first day of shooting, the days grow longer, the pace more frenzied, and the meetings just keep on coming…

The Art Department meeting

Production Designer Ian Brock and his team guide us through ongoing and upcoming construction and builds.  The corridors, now textured and painted, are looking awesome.  Following a small adjustment to the layout of the forward consoles, work has resumed on the bridge’s walls and monitors.  The ship’s lower deck section is pretty damn impressive, with its dark blue metallic multi-level look. And we finally signed off on our shuttle (the Phantom Class Marauder) which will start coming together in the coming weeks.

The Concept meeting

Holy Smokes, it’s really happening!  The various department heads gather to cram themselves into our conference room and discuss the game plan for our first two episodes.  For those of you not familiar with production – or who may be new to this blog – the concept meeting is the very first meeting of prep week.  The 1st A.D. (assistant director), in this case Brandon Tataryn who I’ll be introducing you to in the coming weeks, goes through the script to ensure everyone knows what, if anything, will be required of them in each scene.  For instance, Costumes should have an idea for what our crew will be wearing when they first come out of stasis, while Props should know how many guns we’ll need for the final shootout.

The Stunts/SPFX meeting

SPFX stands for Special Effects, and that includes everything from squib hits to explosions, sparkage to steam.  Our stunt coordinator, John Stead (another guy I’ll be introducing you to in the days ahead), has his work cut out for him as he’ll be choreographing a few big throw-downs, from the opening bridge fracas to the longer and more involved 4 on 1 encounter with the ship’s “security protocol”.  Then, in episode #102, things get real down and dirty – and bloody! – on the planet.

The VFX/Graphics/Playback meeting

Oh, yeah!  We’re a scifi series, and that means stunning visual effects.  A familiar face from our Stargate days, Lawren Bancroft-Wilson, is on hand to supervise sequences like “the missile pursuit” and those FTL jumps and exits.  And, of course, graphics and playback are going to be key to telling our story and ensuring the show maintains that cool, SF visual style.

Remember this?

And this?

Next week  = more meetings and mayhem!

Tagged: Dark Matter

December 11, 2014: Dinner with former cohorts!

Back before Stargate, before my years on teen sitcom Student Bodies, before my time story-editing for the CBS Saturday morning lineup, I was the Manager of Animation Development at an animation studio in Montreal.  It’s been a long while, but I still keep in touch with a few of my former co-workers and even get together with them on occasion.

Like yesterday, for instance, when Anne-Marie Perrotta flew in for super-secret business.  And dinner with us.  At Patria, a Spanish tapas restaurant on King Street that came highly recommended from Prodigy Picture’s resident foodie, Natalie Cooper.

Also joining us on this night was another former face from my animation days, Natalie Dumoulin, now Vice President Creative Affairs at 9story Media Group.

What we had -

Piquillo peppers with oxtail and manchego.

Octopus and potatoes

And, of course, the paella.  With cornish hen and serrano ham.

The dulce de leche churros

In addition to about a dozen other dishes including blistered pardon peppers, chorizo bombas, goat cheese with orange blossom honey and fig, patatas bravas, empanadas, roasted cauliflower, and chocolate pudding with olive oil and sea salt.

Patria: 478 King St. West

Akemi gets acquainted with Natalie’s dog.  

After dinner, we headed over to Natalie’s place for drinks – although, to be fair, she’s the only one who did any actual drinking, opening up a bottle of red to celebrate our re-connecting after all these years.

Just like old times!

But with more tapas.

And less voice actors.

December 10, 2014: The shuttle!

We’re heavy into prep on episodes #101-102 and, with the commencement of principal photography about a month away, sets are coming together nicely.  Our ship, The Raza, has come a long way in the past couple of weeks.  The corridors have been textured with faux-grate flooring, pipes, vents, and grills, its walls painted in metallic hues, sliding doors installed; the quarters are coming to life, the sub-level cargo hold and walkways finished, and the bridge…the window are in, front AND top, and the consoles went in today.

Meanwhile, work is being completed on the shuttle (the Phantom Class Marauder) interior design.  We’ve gone back and forth on its various elements – width, depth, seating layout, windows, and location of the door – and are in the process of finalizing the look.  I wanted something similar to the puddle jumper in terms of layout with a little more of the depth of the SGU shuttle.  Ultimately, I think we’ll also incorporate an element of the SG-1 cargo ships with its sectioned cockpit and separate hold.

Anyway, I contacted Stargate Production Designer James Robbins, who has been doing some fabulous design work for us on Dark Matter (Can’t wait to show you his work on The Marauder, the space station, and the various cruiser, destroyer, and shuttle class versions of the Ferrous Corp, Mikkei Combine, and Galactic Authority ships!), and asked him about the dimensions of those smaller Stargate ship designs.  He sent me the following which I thought were too cool not to share with you -

As James points out, the dimensions are from our VFX department and may not reflect what was actually built.  80 feet long for the SGU shuttle seems a bit much, but the 40 foot length of the Atlantis puddle jumper sounds about right.

Takes you back, no?

Many thanks to James for digging these up from the archive!

Prep continues with non-stop meetings.  Today, it was the concept meeting followed by visual effects, playback, and impromptu hair meeting, stunts, and special effects.  Tomorrow, it’s an Art Department review, props, paints, another hair meeting, and not one but TWO gun meetings!

Tagged: Dark Matter, science fiction, Science Fiction Television, scifi, scifi television, SF, SF television, SG-1, SGA, SGU, Stargate, Stargate ships, Stargate Universe, Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: Atlants, Stargate: SG-1

December 9, 2014: Not peanut butter and other ingesting tragedies!

File photo of Executive Producer Carl Binder eating something that turned out to be totally different from what he was expecting/I told him he was eating.

Every morning, I  make myself a breakfast shake comprised of ten varied ingredients, usually: almond milk, keffir/yogurt, green tea, cinnamon, flaxseed oil, one banana, another piece of fruit, oatmeal/bran, a piece of manuka honey, and a tablespoon of peanut butter.  This day’s prep seemed no different than any other and, after blending together all the components and pouring them into an empty bottle for later, I licked the spoon clean as I usually do – only to discover that what I thought was the homemade peanut butter I picked up at last weekend’s farmer’s market was, in fact, Akemi’s white miso paste which, incidentally, tastes NOTHING like peanut butter.

As I tossed out the shake and got to work on a new one, I was reminded of my very first food miscue.  Way back, when I was in kindergarten, my class was once presented with a tableful of common pantry items, everything from butter to jams. Our teacher asked us to identify what we recognized from our our kitchens. “That’s sugar!”shouted one kid, pointing to a bowl and, before the teacher could respond, perhaps emboldened by my fellow classmate’s ebullience, I scooped it up and poured its contents into my mouth.  As it turned out, he was wrong.  It wasn’t sugar.  And, to this day, I rarely ever add salt to anything.

Two of my father’s most infamous childhood anecdotes involved his own eating blunders.  In both incidents, he snuck into the kitchen, after being sent to bed without supper, for a spoonful of what he assumed to be pudding.  The first time, it was chicken fat; the second, a hot mustard plaster his mother had prepared for his dad’s ailing back.

Akemi offered her own childhood story about her brother who, rushing home after a baseball game and on his way to piano practice, asked his mother for a glass of water.  He was apparently so thirsty that it was only once he’d polished off the glass that he realized his mother had mistakenly poured him an eight ounce shot of sake.

Akemi found the retelling of this story all sorts of hilarious – until I reminded her about the time she brushed her teeth with hand cream.

I’m sure everyone has their own equally horrific story to tell.

And I want to hear it!

Come on.  Fess up.  What was your most memorable food miscue?

December 8, 2014: Snow Monkeys Win! Let’s celebrate with dog videos!

That’s it!  My Snow Monkeys move on to the semi-finals to take on The Mighty Merkins!

Let’s celebrate with doggy videos…

First up, Bubba finally has enough of Lulu’s noisy toy-playing:

Next season on Discovery Channel’s “Eaten Alive”:

December 7, 2014: The weekend roundup!

Errands, errands, and more errands.  And I still didn’t have time to get around to a couple of them.

Despite the fact that our apartment is an island of dog beds, that hasn’t stopped us from picking up a few more.  Like this one we thought might be too tiny and tiny but Lulu manages to squeeze into all the same -

I suspect she’s just hiding out in case Akemi decides to make her wear a silly hat for her walk.  Although, to be fair, as silly as that hat may look on her, Lulu’s got nothing on this dog we met this weekend -

Rather  than leave anything to chance, I decided to test the Bourbon Brown Butter Cookie recipe I want to use for the upcoming Dark Matter cookie exchange (When: Monday, December 15th. Where: The Raza docked at Space Station 41-11B).  And good thing I did because the recipe was, in a word, crap.  Even with the addition of extra butter, bourbon, and eggs, it didn’t bind properly, resulting in a test batch of what looked more like scones rather than cookies -

They tasted okay and I actually preferred the plain ones over the ones with the milk chocolate chunks because the chocolate masked the bourbon flavor.  A subsequent batch using white chocolate was much better, but the texture was still disappointing – dry and crumbly over the soft and chewy I was gunning for.

And so, we’re starting over with an all new recipe and all new batch.  We’re going to chill the dough overnight and will experiment with the new, improved version of our (Maybe Maple?) Bourbon and Brown Butter (with white chocolate/milk chocolate and nuts?) tomorrow.

Speaking of bourbon, Dark Matter Visual Effects Supervisor swung by my place today for a day of football.  His Mighty Hyphens and my Snow Monkeys are two of eight teams battling out in our Fantasy Football League first round playoff weekend.  He’s in a hard-fought battle while I am hoping Aaron Rodgers and Randall Cobb play lights-out tomorrow night to give us the win.  Anyway, Lawren came over bearing an early Christmas gift -

I’ll open it tomorrow night to celebrate my Snow Monkeys victory and advance to the semi-finals against The Mighty Merkins!

December 6, 2014: Stand or die!

Apparently, some Brazilian doctors have developed a test that predicts mortality. It’s a “simple” sitting-standing exercise that measures flexibility and your chances of dropping dead soon.  Real soon: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2858804/Can-exercise-test-predict-DEATH-People-struggle-sitting-rising-test-five-times-likely-die.html

Here’s it is:

1. From a barefoot standing position, lower yourself down to a cross-legged sitting position without using your hands (or any other body part) for support.

2. Stand up again, once more without using any other part of your body for support.

The sitting down portion is scored out of 5.  And the standing up portion is scored out of 5.  Dock 1 point every time you use another part of your body for support. Dock 1/2 point every time you lose your balance.

According to the study, a scored of 8-10 is great;  a score of 7 or lower suggests you’re twice as likely to drop dead within THE NEXT SIX YEARS.

So, I had Akemi try it.  “Sit down,”I said and she sat down, smoothly transitioning to a cross-legged sitting position.  “Now stand up,”I said.  She planted her feet and stood up, just as smoothly.  It was as if I’d rewound a video of her sitting down.

I took this test to work and, amazingly, every one of my co-workers who tried the test passed.  In fact, pretty much everyone passed.  Except for one single person.

Me!  I had no problem sitting down but when it came time to standing up…  It’s not that I had trouble doing it.  I simply COULDN’T do it.  There is NO WAY I can stand up from a cross-legged sitting position.

All this to say, given the five year outline I have for the show, it may behoove the production office to have a back-up plan for the show runner position, just in case.